The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  Deneth took a deep, long breath. For a moment, Marith wondered if the man would be fool enough to try to kill him. He bent down, gathered a handful of Carlan’s blood, poured two cups of brandy, divided the frozen drops between them, gave one to Deneth. ‘Death and all demons, Lord Relast. You agreed to back me.’ The shadows clawed at the walls. He smiled. Deneth drank slowly. Bent and knelt at his feet.

  Marith did not sleep that night. He walked down onto the beach, out onto the moor, stood by the stones that marked the lich road and looked up at the night. The weather was changing, clouds coming in blocking out the stars. Ragged across the sky, great reaching, tearing hands dark beyond dark. Like the cloud was the edge of the world, the stars beyond a crack from which all the life was pouring out.

  No longer frightening. Nothing was frightening now. Marith walked the walls of the fortress, paced the corridors and halls.

  In the grey light of dawn he came back into his chambers. In the bedchamber Thalia lay asleep, her face crumpled and strained. A few beech leaves were scattered on the floor by the bed. Marith sat down and looked at her. Her hair hung across the pillows like a stream of black water. She was wrapped heavily in the blankets, hunched with cold. But her left arm showed. Her scars. Like writing, she had said one night when he had pressed his face against them, kissed them one by one, held his own marred left hand beside them. Writing that told her guilt and her power in jagged marks on her perfect, luminous skin.

  It can’t be stopped. Can’t be undone. It’s too late. He kissed her hair, took a bottle from the sideboard, went out. He walked back through the doors of the keep into the gardens. Over to the edge of the cliff, where a small mound rose, bare earth still being reclaimed by the grass and the moss. A rough stone at its top, carved with the crude image of a horse. A very old stone, far, far older than the grave it marked.

  The clouds were thicker, sea mist and drizzle. The sky was lighter now, almost full morning, but the sun was hidden. The sea the colour of a drawn sword.

  In the court of kings he was victorious,

  Fair-haired, fair-mannered,

  Horse tamer,

  Gold wearer,

  Strong young tree branch,

  Fierce to his enemies, kind to his friends.

  No man can say of him,

  That he did not fight his share or give it.

  No man can say of him,

  That he did not deserve his renown.

  The old songs, the laments for dead heroes. We drink and fight and kill and die.

  What would Carin think of this? he wondered. Laugh? Weep? Try to kill him in his turn, to stop it? Ride out beside him, hating him but loyal to the end of everything? Nod, and smile, and look at him in silence? Shake his head, and say he’d always known?

  The wind blew a cold squall of spray into his face. He poured some of the contents of the bottle onto the earth of the grave. He sat down leaning against the headstone and drank the rest in long, leisurely mouthfuls.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Fire and smoke. Fire and blood. Over and over, endless. The smell was coming into Orhan’s dreams, there in his bedroom, his dining room, when he was taking a piss. Smelled it last night in Darath’s arms, fucking him and suddenly cold with the sick stench of burning.

  Bil had talked about a taste in her mouth, a smell in her breath, caused by the child within her. Common, she said, in pregnant women. Meant a healthy child, more likely a boy. Meant good.

  The roof of Tam’s house collapsed in a shower of sparks, wild dancing like Year’s Heart magery. A great gout of smoke went up. A few ragged cheers. A beautiful building, the House of the Sun in Shadow. Gold columns and white marble, a window of mage glass in green and deep blue. Roses in pots on the balconies, the central courtyard a grove of magnolia and cherry trees with a little pool lined in black china to make the water as dark and cool as sleep. He’d been to parties there. Sucked Darath’s cock there, on one memorable occasion.

  A crash and the windows of the upper floor fell in, sending several large pieces of burning timber down. More cheers, mixed with a few screams. He should probably have some soldiers sent over here. Someone was going to get hurt.

  Someone had, of course, already been hurt. Several someones, in fact. Orhan had been sure he could hear them screaming, for a while, even over the roar of the flames. One middle-aged woman. A girl of marriageable age, a boy a few years younger. A very old man. Nobody anyone would miss. Beggars. Street whores. Hatha addicts. Daughters and sons and mothers and lovers. And then the servants and the bondsmen and the hangers-on and Tam’s boy and a couple of people whose names got dragged in because, well, just because …

  Ultimately, he’d killed every single one of them.

  He could blame Tam. Darath did. He’d betrayed them, and had surely planned to do the same to them. Orhan and Bil and Darath and Elis and Elis’s myriad mistresses and the boy Darath had been screwing last month. All of them, burning. Would Tam have felt guilt about it? Cared?

  Probably yes, Orhan thought, watching the flames. Tam wasn’t a monster, any more than he was. The law was the law. He didn’t want any of this to happen. It just had to be done.

  The worst thing he’d ever done. Though possibly not the worst thing he would ever do.

  Thank the Lord of Living and Dying the child’s not mine, he thought.

  A very long time he stood there, watching the fires. The house finally collapsed completely, caving in like a gutted ox. Bil left early on, pleading sickness and weariness, carried back in her splendid new litter, green silk shimmering like leaves, its bearers white robed like new bones. She had begun preparations for the baby, opening the house’s nurseries, interviewing wet-nurses and servants, exploring the relative merits of silk and silk velvet as material for clout cloths. Found it tiring, she said, in her current state.

  Darath stayed for longer, standing gravely beside Orhan, cynically dressed in old clothes to dump afterwards rather than try and wash out the stink.

  ‘Come and get drunk with me,’ he said to Orhan after the front wall came down with a roar and a burst of morbid applause.

  ‘Maybe not a good idea.’

  ‘No, but a necessary one.’ He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Come round tomorrow. Well after noon. And don’t spend too much time brooding.’

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ Orhan grasped his lover’s hand suddenly, almost hungry for him to stay. ‘I would come. But …’

  ‘What do you think I see in you, Lord Emmereth? I don’t just marvel at the beauty of your cock, you know.’ Darath squeezed his hand back, smiling at him ruefully. ‘Necessary evil, Orhan. I’ll fuck you tomorrow, make you happy again.’

  And so he was alone, with the last of the crowd of voyeurs and carrion crawlers and those with nothing else to see and nowhere else to go. The night drawing in. Night comes. Some of us survive. No desire to go home and look at his own walls and imagine them burning instead.

  He walked away aimlessly into the city. Another hot day. Thin high clouds making the evening sky grey and yellowed like diseased skin. In the Street of All Sorrows women had been pouring water to keep down the dust and the air smelled sweet with it. A street trader stood in a shady alleyway with a tray of little paper kites that bobbed in the air on strings hung with copper bells. Strange, to think that one day soon he’d be buying such toys for Bil’s child.

  Camellias blossomed all down the sides of the street, red and pink and pallid white. Pethe birds flickered in the branches, chasing butterflies. The leaves on the bushes were curling and browned, dropping to the ground, trampled to a mush underfoot, soiling the stones.

  That’s another good omen, Orhan thought. My, my, I’m melancholy this evening. Too many late nights and early mornings. Too much time spent with old books. A thinness of the blood, a confusion of the red and yellow humours. Burn sage and lemon peel and tallow candles, take hot baths regularly, avoid milk and sweet things. Try not to kill people, and, if you do, try not to think too much about the fact they’re de
ad.

  He turned off All Sorrows into Beating Heart Lane, where there were no flowers and nothing was currently dying. A small, thin alley, a cut-between housing a quiet wine shop and a baker’s, leading to the Street of the Butchered Horse and then the Street of Flowers. Down the Street of Flowers itself, sweet with yellow lilies, where fashionable crowds were strolling before a late dinner, making eyes at each other, smoothing down their silk dresses, raising their arms casually so that golden bracelets and heavy gemstones best caught the light. A beautiful boy slunk past him, red hair, a mouth like a rose. Orhan stared. Should have gone with Darath, he thought mournfully.

  His footsteps were leading him to Darath’s house. Darath wasn’t even there. He turned away, wandered aimlessly for a while, had almost reached the Court of the Broken Knife when one of his guardsmen raised his hand to stop him.

  ‘Someone’s following us, My Lord. Someone—’

  An explosion of white light. No sound, but a sudden strong, sweet smell. Orhan fell backwards, his head striking the marble paving stones. Blind: brilliant silver in his vision, black patterns moving. Another burst of light, and then silence, and then someone was helping him to his feet.

  He stood up dizzily, his clothes feeling hot and dry, flaky and rough on his skin. The square smelled of other things now, scorched stone, burnt things. Always burnt things. Two of his guards were dead on the ground, black and bloodied. Smoke and flames rose from their clothes. He regarded them gravely, as his remaining guards began to pull him away. More dead.

  ‘Run! My Lord! Run!’

  More light, licking around the square. Quicksilver, pouring in thick trails. Melting the stone. Orhan screamed. Began to run with his guards, swords drawn uselessly, shouting prayers. A great burst of green-gold fire caught him on his arm and his shirt was burning, pain tearing up his skin. He staggered, knocked off balance, white light pulsing behind his eyes. Endless voices screaming. All he could smell was burning flesh. He fell to the ground again, beating at his burning clothes. A guardsman dragged at him, hauled him towards the nearest doorway. Wood and stone exploded above their heads. The tinkling of shattered stonework falling in tiny fragments like glass beads, making music on the paving of the street.

  A figure leapt forward in the corner of his vision, threw itself at another, slighter man standing in the corner where two houses met. A howl and a burst of light, suddenly extinguished. The two men rolled on the ground, grappling with each other. Light burst up again, and a scream. Blind. Silver. The outline of a man’s body flashed black in Orhan’s closed eyes, bones and heart visible through the skin. Writhing like water. Like the way the rain had beaten on the ground. Men can’t move like that, he thought somewhere in some distant part of his mind. Can’t move like that. His vision flickered back slowly, light and shadow dancing around in his eyes. When he could see again his guard lay sprawled at odd angles, his body jerking. The mage was gone.

  Orhan crawled forwards. Tried to stand. The pressure of his weight on his arm made him scream: he fell back down, dazed with pain. Hands reached for him. He felt himself pulled up gently, helped into a nearby shop. Sat gasping and shaking in a small bookseller’s. Two guardsmen sat flanking him, swords on their knees.

  They sat like that for a long while. The third guard lay in the street. Should go and see him. Should check he was alive. Should help him. But Orhan’s body shook uncontrollably. Couldn’t move.

  People came creeping back into the street, staring with awestruck faces at the burnt stone. At the bodies. The owner of the house that had been hit came out and wept, cursing man and God. Blood trickled from a wound to his face where he had been hit by flying glass. Lucky to be alive. The bookseller brought Orhan water and wine and a cloth to bind his arm.

  ‘My man,’ Orhan whispered. ‘My servant – the one who fought … The one there … Help him.’ The bookseller stared at him dumbly. Backed away, muttering a prayer. Orhan drank the water. His arm was burned. His hands shook too much to be able to bind up the wound. The guard lay in the street, still jerking a little now and again. ‘Help him,’ Orhan said to the two men by his side. They too stared at him dumbly. They were paid to guard him. So would not leave him. So sat and watched their comrade die.

  A group of Imperial soldiers arrived, terrified, no idea what to do or why. Orhan spoke to them haltingly, his voice distant in his head. A mage. Yes, a mage. Yes, mage fire. Yes, he was certain. They gathered up the bodies. The guard who’d attacked the mage was now dead. One of the soldiers cut the dead men’s throats just to be sure. They’d sew up their mouths and sew up their eyes and bury them in the shadow of the city walls with wreaths of copperstem around their necks. And still they’d be afraid of them. Orhan was a rational man. But he shuddered, looking at the crumpled bodies. A bad death. Unnatural and wrong.

  The new litter was fetched: Orhan shook so much he was unable to walk. Fortunately the litter hadn’t been made by the man who’d just tried to kill him. Orhan gave a couple of gold talents to the bookseller and the man with the ruined house. Then he crawled into his litter, feeling horribly exposed and imprisoned behind its curtains. The journey home seemed to take an eternity. His arm hurt. His whole body hurt. His head ached. He could still see lights dancing in his vision, burned onto his eyes. Janush his doctor bound his arm with feverfew and calendula flowers and muttered a prayer. Finally he collapsed into bed, smoke-stained and exhausted and shaking.

  It all just went on and on and on. Never ending. What have I done? he kept thinking. How could it possibly have been worth it? What have I done? What have I done?

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Woke the next morning to find Darath sitting at the end of his bed.

  ‘I don’t think much of your security arrangements,’ said Darath. He was munching candied apricots, held out the dish to Orhan. ‘I could have cut your throat a dozen times while you snored. Didn’t even bother to take my dagger. Want one?’

  Orhan sat up and rubbed his face. ‘I think they make a special dispensation for you. You’d probably persuade me to flog them if they tried to strip-search you on the way in here.’

  ‘Such tender signs of affection.’ Darath leaned over and kissed him, bits of apricot stuck to his lips and getting into Orhan’s mouth.

  ‘So …’ Darath shuffled up, lay down beside Orhan, who curled himself gratefully into his lover’s shoulder, closing his eyes. So good, having him here like this. They should live together properly. He’d suggest it. Yes.

  ‘So,’ said Darath. ‘Someone tried to kill you last night. Does nobody in Sorlost have the decency just to die when someone tries to kill them any more? If you’d come drinking with me, you’d have escaped completely, you realize?’

  ‘If I’d come drinking with you, we’d both have been burnt to pieces. It was a pretty close thing as it was.’

  ‘No, you’d have woken hung-over in my bedroom, wrapped in my ardent arms and in a considerably better mood than you seem to be. Understandably so, I grant you. Anyway.’ Darath chewed another apricot. ‘March, I assume?’

  ‘I’d think it most likely.’ Orhan raided the plate, realizing he was starving. ‘It was painfully crude. And stupid.’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

  Darath wrapped his arms around him, kissed him again. Kisses literally sweet as honey. ‘Thank Great Tanis for stupidity.’

  ‘Oh, I intend to. A big show of thanks, a thaler’s worth of candles, rub March’s nose in his failure. Come with me?’

  Darath sighed. ‘If I must. No, no, of course, I’ll come. A thaler’s worth of candles burning will be quite a wonderful sight with an aching head and not enough sleep. Your assassin had consummate timing: I’d only just got off after a night of pitifully mild debauchery when one of my servants woke me up again to let me know you weren’t dead. God’s knives, Orhan.’

  Orhan bathed and dressed slowly. His body hurt as though he was a thousand years old. He was bruised and battered, thick red burns on his arm. But surprisingly unharm
ed otherwise. Or not surprising: he was beginning to suspect that March hadn’t actually wanted him to have died. He came back to his bedroom to find Darath sprawled on his bed still eating apricots and reading one of the Treasury ledgers he’d brought home.

  ‘Fascinating stuff,’ Darath said. ‘You cut my stipend as Lord of the Golden Mask of the Furthest West, I see. My great-great-great-great uncle bribed and blackmailed one of the under-secretaries for months to get that. Five thalers a month, it pays.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to be reading that. And you’ve still got the title, so don’t complain.’

  ‘I’m not complaining. I’m just observing. But don’t be surprised if I can’t afford to buy you a gift on your birthday this year. So.’ Darath sat up cross-legged, shoving the book away. He’d got honey smears on the cover. Honey and human skin: Lord of Living and Dying have mercy. Orhan felt nauseous looking at it. ‘So. What the fuck do we do about March, then?’

  Orhan sighed wearily. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Really. Not now.’

  ‘You know why he’s doing it like this, of course?’

  ‘We discussed this, I thought. Because he’s an idiot.’

  ‘Because it makes you look an idiot, Orhan.’

  That stung. ‘And why is that, exactly?’

  ‘Why? You know why. Your big triumph, your enemies dead and your power displayed, and you can’t manage to walk home without someone trying to burn you to a crisp with mage fire. Do you know how long it’s been since anyone was assassinated using magery? It’s so dramatically overblown it stops even being frightening. Just goes straight to utterly and totally absurd.’

  ‘But it failed.’

  ‘But that hardly matters. You think you can keep a grip on the city with this going on around you? People will start to laugh. You can’t ignore it.’